


A Change of Heart

by serenitysolstice



Category: Wicked - All Media Types
Genre: Banned Together Bingo, F/F, Fantastic Racism, Fuck the Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26326156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenitysolstice/pseuds/serenitysolstice
Summary: Glinda goes through some changes when she gets back from the Emerald City. Bookverse, but because I can't actually remember the canon well, I kinda just invented my own character journey for her.
Relationships: Elphaba Thropp/Galinda Upland
Kudos: 23
Collections: Banned Banned Together Bingo 2020, Banned Together Bingo 2020





	A Change of Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for another Banned Together Bingo prompt, this time being 'Fuck The Man', which is also my free space fill! Not super sure it fills the prompt enough for the mods, but we'll find out!

Glinda returned to Shiz.

What else could she have done? Elphie was already out of sight before Glinda had fully registered the goodbye for what it was (not that she should have been surprised; Elphie was never good with the sentimental) and by the time she was leaving the Emerald City, she didn’t know where she could have started looking.

That wasn’t what stopped her. No, what stopped Glinda from looking for her was what had stopped Elphaba from getting the textbooks that she needed from the library, what stopped Nessarose from writing to her father about the subtle changes to the school after Elphaba left, what stopped the Charmed Circle from daring to meet again at all.

What stopped Doctor Dillamond, period.

Morrible.

Glinda crossed the campus to attend her sorcery lecture. There was a Tiktok in the back of the classroom, and Miss Greyling had halted her efforts entirely on teaching them larger spells. Glinda sat in the library with a history book, open but she couldn’t read a word, and heard another one whirring around on the shelves behind her. Glinda wandered down to the Suicide Canal, unsupervised, unescorted, unable to shake the burn behind her eyes, only to turn home when she saw yet another hulking, clanking mechanical monster rolling over the grass away from her. She didn’t doubt that it saw her.

Elphie had been right then. She’d been right all along. And now she was God knows where, doing God knows what. Glinda wasn’t sure she was still alive.

The year passed slowly. In the absence of more interesting spells, Glinda switched out of Sorcery and into Architecture. The class was combined with the boy’s college. Glinda didn’t care.

Morrible did.

“My dear Galinda,” she began, with a sickly smile that failed to change the expression on her face in any way. “surely there must be some kind of mistake. I hear from Miss Greyling that you’re looking to leave sorcery?”

“It wasn’t the right major for me.” Glinda replied simply. She didn’t look away from Morrible’s frown. She didn’t flinch when Grommetik - the only Tiktok she’d yet to see roaming the campus since her visit to the Emerald City - let out a shrill whine and burst of steam. Everyone in the room knew Morrible frightened her. She didn’t need to show it.

“That can’t possibly be true!” The old fish exclaimed. Her expression soured, though Glinda wasn’t sure how that was possible. “I remember how desperate you were last year, how adamant you were that sorcery was the class for you! And look how you flourished under the skilled tutelege of Miss Greyling!”

“If I may, Madame Morrible, it was you who suggested I give the matter some thought before deciding right away. You warned me how taxing, and how dangerous sorcery could be, and how we couldn’t let it fall into unskilled hands just because they were eager.” Morrible’s eyes narrowed. “I’m afraid that my hands were just those unskilled ones. You were right.”

“Are you sure, Miss Galinda? I’d hate to see such a pretty young thing make a brash and ill thought out mistake.” Elphaba’s face, close and concerned, seconds after kissing her, barraged unbidden into her mind. She swallowed thickly.

“Picking sorcery as a major in my first year was a mistake, Madame Morrible. If switching to study something else is as well, then that’s my mistake to make too. I wouldn’t hold anyone else responsible.” Morrible laughed, the sound sharp and cold.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you? Very well, consider your request approved. Your new timetable will be with you within the day.” Her voice went soft. “But I’ll personally keep an eye on your progress, Miss Galinda. I’d hate to think you were wasting your potential in the wrong program, when you’re such a bright  
young thing.”

Glinda didn’t doubt that for a moment.

Architecture was everything she’d hoped it would be. She could study the beauty in the buildings, and the people behind that beauty. She loved her designs, and her professor loved them too. There was no more-

“Why is half the Emerald city made out of emeralds, and half made out of wood painted green?”

“Because Animals can’t tell the difference?” She didn’t see who answered the question; a group of Gillikinese boys at the back of the room, to the laughs and jeers of his friends. She always stayed near the front, to the side, where she was mostly invisible. Not that she was shy, or unsure of herself, but because she didn’t want the boys in the class to antagonize her. She didn’t have time for that.

She saw the professor fight a smile, before pressing on.

“Of course, historically, Animals were relegated to certain areas of the Emerald City, where movement was easier and there were fewer...dexterities required. But in this case, the wooden homes were build by -” She tuned him out.

So there was some propaganda. But there was always some propaganda, now that she knew what to look out for. The worst part was that she knew the boy was right. The wooden part of the city was where the Animals lived, and the Quadlings and the Vinkans, and when there was strife - there was always some kind of strife in the City these days - these buildings were the first ones to be destroyed. She wondered if the insurgents were responsible. She felt a green hand cup her cheek gently, and thought not.

She graduated. Of course she did. She graduated well, not top of her class because too many men were tested side by side with her, though she knew she performed at least as well as they did, but close enough. She moved to the Emerald City. She fell out of contact with her parents. She worked. She worked for, of all people, the Wizard’s office, handling the designs for new building proposals. It was a good job, she was lucky to fall out of university and into such a prestigious position. It would have been a good job, if it weren’t that most of her designs were for barracks and training facilities, rather than anything vital like orphanages or schools. Sometimes she designed those too, but they were rarely built. Glinda heard Elphaba's voice in the back of her mind every time she submitted a design for a new hospital, maximizing internal space for better efficiency. 'What did you expect?' She'd laugh, every time she was rejected. Her brain always made Elphaba sound more cruel than she remembered.

She started moonlighting.

There was a church not far from the house she was staying in - a guest of the Lord Chuffery, as she’d been close to his late wife - that she took to visiting. The Church of Saint Glinda. The first time she crossed the doorway she felt nothing but guilt for everything she’d done, and everything she’d not done.

Tonight, there was no guilt.

Folded small in her handbag were papers. Building designs. Building alterations. The nuns in the building didn’t look twice when she came in, hair loose and wild like she’d just tumbled out of bed (she had) and wrapped in a cloak that was several sizes too big for her. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but she wasn’t the Emerald City’s most famous personality. She climbed into a confessional booth, and waited.

“And if you’ll look at the second page, you’ll see that the false wall can look exactly like the real thing, by using very thin slices of stone. I can’t help you source the stone, but without any kind of electric light in the cellar, no one will notice if you can't manage it. The materials for the wall itself are on the back of the first page, see where you fill in the dimensions you’re working with already -” and on, and on.

It wasn’t easy work. It was grueling, it was exhausting, it meant she barely got a moment’s rest. It also meant that fewer undesirable citizens were being removed by the weekly raids that took place all over the city. If she had to design training grounds and military headquarters by day, the least she could do was help the citizens hide themselves by night.

And of course, look for Elphaba. That was why she’d moved to the City, after all. Find Elphaba. But there were a family of Otters whose home by Restwater lake had been demolished, and the Quadling looking for a cellar room to hide out in until he could leave the city safely, and the poor Bearcub, who lost his parents to a raid, and a child found him alone and trembling in the burned down remains of what would have been his familial home. How could she search for Elphaba when so many people were depending on her to help them. She had a job to do.

Elphaba would have to wait.


End file.
